One electric-vehicle challenge Elon Musk saw coming in his rear-view mirror has just edged past him. On Wednesday, BYD clocked quarterly sales that handily beat Tesla. The next worry is that his Chinese rival will keep pulling further ahead.
BYD’s top line was neck and neck with Tesla’s in last year’s fourth quarter. But it powered ahead in the latest results, with a record 201 billion yuan ($28 billion) in revenue in the three months to the end of September, some $3 billion more than its U.S. rival’s.
Yesterday someone posted a screenshot of the price of a fully trimmed ID3 costing 63K €. Mind you ID3 is a small compact car. That’s absolutely insane, and then VW is wondering why their profit and sales are sliding down the drain. They were supposed to be producing mass market affordable cars.
I don’t think that those tariffs will help much, and it will be counterproductive in the long term for the European car industry.